Attacking the Windows Nvidia Driver

A lot of people hated the decision, but back when Microsoft refused to support WebGL, one of the reasons were that the GPU drivers were awful and exposing them to the internet was dangerous.<p>The proper solution, of course, i for GPU drivers not to suck but it was still a legitimate point and this article seems to validate that.

I cant prove this but my computer blue screened after a Nvidia driver update. It took my several hours to get everything working again because it wouldnt even launch in safe mode. Very frustrating. I wish they had a little more quality control on their drivers.

What I&#x27;d like to see is a &quot;slimmed down&quot; version of the graphics drivers.<p>Right now my graphics driver carries a boatload of &quot;utilities&quot; of questionable utility - especially &quot;hand written artisanal shaders&quot; to improve quality in AAA titles, where NV or ATI optimize the game&#x27;s original shaders. NVIDIA ships stuff for 3D glasses.<p>How about that the driver packages only load these when asked to do so, e.g. when a game that can be optimized is installed &#x2F; launched, or when a 3D glass is added?

I wonder if AMD drivers have the same attack surfaces as the nvidia drivers<p>Edit: a quick google search turns up CVEs for the old catalyst driver, but none for the newer crimson drivers.

Project Zero is awesome. I&#x27;m not normally a fan of the GOOG, but these guys are doing some seriously good work.

Getting these issues fixed in the drivers is great, no doubt. But it&#x27;s moot if nobody actually updates to those fixed versions. How hard are nVidia&#x2F;Microsoft trying to actually push these out over Windows Update so that end users will actually benefit from all of this work?

Can someone give me a layman&#x27;s definition of an &quot;escape&quot; and why they would be legitimately needed? Are they needed so callbacks can &quot;escape&quot; and be exposed to other classes? (does that make any sense?)

Slightly off topic but with all the video expertise in this thread, I want to ask anyway! :-)<p>I&#x27;m currently selecting parts for my next computer, to be used for continued development of the Windows .NET software for the Web site for my startup and also for my first Web server available to beta testers and then to the public on the Internet.<p>So, sure, I need a video card. Of course, I will do some routine Web browsing, maybe watch a movie at YouTube or Netflix. But I have never played a video game and, trying to get my business going, have no intention of playing a video game.<p>So, looking at information on video cards, it appears that maybe the card should support hardware acceleration of Microsoft&#x27;s DirectX version 12 and also maybe some recent version of OpenGL.<p>Question 1: Why should I move from just VGA, that is, get just a VGA card and not even get a <i>graphics</i> card? What will I get from a graphics card I really need and can&#x27;t get from just VGA?<p>Question 2: If I get a graphics card, will DirectX 12 hardware acceleration on a graphics card help for some of Web browsing or movie watching?<p>Question 3: Same as Question 2 but for OpenGL?<p>Some people on this tread may have some good answers. As far as I can tell, good answers on the Internet are like hen&#x27;s teeth -- it looks like everyone wants to sell graphics cards for the latest <i>gaming experience</i>.<p>Thanks!

&gt; Most of the vulnerabilities found ... were very basic mistakes, such as writing to user provided pointers blindly, disclosing uninitialised kernel memory to user mode, and incorrect bounds checking.<p>It&#x27;s not just Windows drivers with these problems...